Will Young: to star in ghost drama Bedlam. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

Digital channel Living, best known for screening Britain's Next Top Model and Most Haunted, has commissioned its first original UK drama, a £3m supernatural thriller starring Will Young.

Bedlam is set in a disused asylum that is being converted into loft-style apartments, where things start going bump in the night.

Young, the Pop Idol winner who became a chart-topping music star, plays a character desperate to find out why his brother has died.

Though better known for his pop career, Young has previously had roles in the movie Mrs Henderson Presents, ITV drama Miss Marple and on stage in Noel Coward's The Vortex.

The six-parter, budgeted at about £3m, starts filming next month and is being made by Red, the Manchester-based independent production company responsible for Queer as Folk, Clocking Off and Casanova.

Bedlam marks a significant departure for subscription channel Living, which has up to now targeted female viewers with factual entertainment shows such as Britain's Next Top Model and Most Haunted, and US imports including Grey's Anatomy.

Claudia Rosencrantz, the director of television for the Living TV Group of channels, which were recently sold by Virgin Media to BSkyB for £165m, said she was moving Living away from a narrow focus on "pink and paranormal".

"We thought it was time, that the channel was mature and ambitious enough, to commission its first scripted piece. We wanted to make sure Living had a variety of things, including original drama," added Rosencrantz. "When I arrived Living was pink and paranormal. That was too narrow an identity. It is all about intelligent, glamorous entertainment now."

Jenny Reeks, Rosencrantz's former ITV colleague, is overseeing Bedlam for Living, and if the series works, it is expected to return.

BBC Worldwide is also investing in Bedlam, which it hopes to distribute outside of the UK, particularly to US viewers, who are lapping up supernatural tales, from Twilight to True Blood.

Rosencrantz is now trying to ensure couples will watch Living shows together, with more programmes appealing to both women and men.

Recent commissions have included 4 Weddings, in which brides judge their rivals' weddings to pick a winner, and Dating in the Dark, made by Endemol, in which a group of single men and women select potential mates through encounters in darkened rooms.

In July, Rosencrantz also lured Katie Price away from ITV2, where her observational series, What Katie Did Next... has been one of the biggest multichannel hits of recent years.

Price's first Living show launches in November. Rosencrantz said Price is "ripe for reinvention, and saw the opportunity to reposition herself".

Living TV Group's channels – Living, Bravo, Channel One (formerly Virgin1) and Challenge – are expected to be fully integrated into Sky's west London base at Osterley later this year, once the deal is cleared by UK competition regulators processes have been completed, and the longer-term plans for the networks are unclear.

"Sky is trying to find reasons, with entertainment, for people to come into Sky. Their recent HBO deal is part of that shift, and for Living glossy UK drama of a very strong kind is part of a drive I've been making for the past four years, since I moved to this job," said Rosencrantz.

She is unable to answer questions about the future, until the sale to Sky is finally sealed, but said: "I am extremely happy. I stay in places where I am happy to work, and leave places where I am not."

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